Instagram, Snapchat drop Giphy feature as racist GIF spotted

Popular image sharing and multimedia mobile app Snapchat and Instagram have temporarily removed their Giphy GIF sticker features after users saw a racist GIF as an option to add to their photographs. “We are very sorry. This GIF should have never appeared in Snapchat. Our team has worked with Giphy to have the GIF removed and it should no longer appear,” a Snap Inc. spokesperson was quoted as saying by Inverse late on Friday.

“We are in the process of removing Giphy from our application until we can be assured that this will never happen again,” the spokesperson added. A 21-year-old Snapchat user from England first spotted the racist animation in the library.

The GIF “appears to suggest that millions of deaths are caused by black people committing crimes with a number counter continually rising”. A similar racist GIF was spotted in Facebook-owned Instagram indicating that Giphy is at fault, according to TechCrunch. “This type of content has no place on Instagram. We have stopped our integration with Giphy as they investigate the issue,” an Instagram spokesperson was quoted as saying by TechCrunch.

Both Snapchat and Instagram had introduced the feature in February that allows users to include GIFs from the media repository Giphy in their snaps and “Stories”.